Feb. 1st, 2012 column

[Pete Heley]

Tenmile Lake and Tenmile Creek actually became quite muddy over the last week, an occurence that almost never happens. Anglers wanting to fish Tenmile Creek would do well to pay attention to to the section of the stream below where Eel Creek enters as Eel Creek is still pretty clear and will tend to dilute the silt load in Tenmile Creek. Eel Creek is also open for steelhead fishing, but except for a short section that runs along the west side of Highway 101 a couple of hundred yards above where the stream enters Tenmile Creek, Eel Creek is very difficult to fish during high water due to how snaggy it is.
Although sand shrimp seems to be in short supply, there were quite a few sturgeon anglers fishing the Umpqua over the last week. Almsot all of them fished above Reedsport from the upper several miles of tidewater below Wells Creek to the increasingly popular spot a few miles above Wells Creek. Cold water temperatures coupled with high muddy water limit the nuisance bites sculpins, crabs and other bait stealers - making bait, once again, a nominal expense.

Some diehard dock crabbers actually caught some legal crabs at Winchester Bay over the weekend from Dock A. Although Dock A is somewhat farther upriver than Dock 9 and the Coast Guard Pier, the water is somewhat less muddy due to the freshwater coming in from Winchester Creek. The few anglers fishing the South Jetty also caught some fish, but anglers fishing inside the Triangle and off the south side of the Triangle did better than the anglers fishing the Umpqua River side which was extremely muddy. If those anglers had walked farther out towards the tip of the Triangle, the water would have been somewhat cleaner during high tide as the ocean water diluted the muddy river water. A surprising number of anglers do not yet realize that cabezon are illegal to keep through March are illegal to keep - for everyone - even for anglers fishing off the bank.

While my favorite online fishing sites remain: (1) washingtonlakes.com - which also includes an Oregon section (oregonfishingnews.com); (2) Ifish.net and (3) Oregon Fishing Forum, I did stumble across a couple of sites this week that should be of interest to Oregon anglers. They are: myfishingbuddy.com and southernoregonfishingreports.com.
2013 Oregon Sport Fishing Regulation Development Public Process packs can be obtained from the ODFW by online requests from the ODFW website. An even easier way to to attend the ODFW open meeting this upcoming Tuesday (Feb. 7th) in Charleston at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology Dining Hall at 63466 Boat Basin Drive. Betwenen 6 and 8 pm, ODFW staff will available to answer questions and outline a new process for anglers proposing new or modified fishing regulations for 2013.

According to Mike Gray, ODFW fish biologist in Charleston, the agency solicits public proposals for changes to the fishing regulations every four years. ODFW has modified the procedure to put more emphasis on local biologists screening proposals to see if they meet established criteria.

“We won’t be discussing proposals at this meeting,” explained Gray. “Rather, we’re making sure people understand the criteria for an acceptable proposal and what the local review process will be.”
Gray encourages anyone with a specific proposal to contact the fish district after the meeting to discuss their proposal. Proposals can be submitted up until Feb. 29 for the 2013-2016 regulation period. Anglers will have a chance to consider the staff and public proposals that met the review criteria at a second meeting in May. Information about the fishing regulation development process – including a list of ODFW staff proposals and guidelines for submitting a proposal – is available on the ODFW website.

Some upcoming fisheries to be aware of are for striped bass and spring chinook. Closemouthed anglers, many of them from the Eugene area will begin fishing at night for striped bass as soon as the Smith River warms and clears. The late winter and early spring fishery will be most productive in the upper several miles of tidewater on the mainstem Smith and also three or four miles up the North Fork Smith. Since 2011 offered, what is arguably, the best striped bass fishing on the Umpqua River system in more than a decade, hopefully the early season striper fishing will be above average as well. Every spring, there are reports of steelhead anglers floating the river and encountering large schools of stripers, but what is happening in almost every case is that the anglers are “herding” the fish in front of them until a shallow spot is reached and the stripers zip past the anglers rather than swim through the shallow water. As for the springers, the first catch is usually made during the first week in March, but since fishing pressure is greatly reduced until word gets out that catches have been made, they actually could be in the river a few weeks before that. The Umpqua is possibly the only river in the Pacific Northwest where the largest spring chinook taken each year is larger than the largest fall chinook with springers weighing 50 pounds or more taken most years.